Chapter 1
Kate
You could spot the dusters from a mile away.
Poor humans living in filth, caked in layers of ashy dust, their hands were thick with callouses, their clothes were never new, and no amount of soaking fully washed away the grime beneath their fingernails.
They took out the trash, delivered the mail, worked at the solar plants.
They kept the city of Fallset running, doing the work no one else wanted.
In the wealthier neighborhoods, paid street sweepers kept the roads and sidewalks clean of the dried, dusting mud. No such luxury existed in the poorer neighborhoods. Thus, we walked around in a constant state of filth.
The earth no longer rained just water. It wept ash, a thick, soggy mess.
After the rainwater soaked into the ground, it left behind a grey, muddy sludge.
The raging hot sun baked the cakes of mud, which dusted into the atmosphere, and since the streets of Five Points never got cleaned, dusters were always dirty and wore cloth filtration masks for breathing.
With a crack in both arches, my sneakers squelched, my wool socks growing soggier with every step.
I only had one other pair of shoes at home, but hated wearing them.
They were stiff boots, a size too big, and hurt my ankles.
It’ll suck to lose my sneakers, but the mud only makes the cracks in the arches grow. I’ll have to throw them away.
Even on a clear night, the dim, yellow lamplight barely illuminates the sidewalks; tonight, I see nothing beyond a few yards, and the rain is loud, a deafening white noise whirring like a blizzard, so I can’t hear past my own steps.
The damp fabric of my mask chafes irritatingly against my skin.
I should be home sleeping, staying dry, staving off the risk of pneumonia and other human viruses.
Nights like these test my resolve. Life is never easy, but at least before I got the impulsive urge to reinvent myself, I stayed inside like everyone else when it rained.
Hiding in my apartment, I’d read beneath my solar-powered lamp, drink homemade wine shared by my neighbors, and live vicariously through the characters in my books.
Six days a week, I woke up and went to work, pushed a metal cart through the hallways of overcrowded mail rooms, and sorted through packages.
It was always busy—exhausting, really, with an endless flow of packages keeping the city fed and happy—but unlike other positions in the company, which involved a lot of heavy lifting, it wasn’t back-breaking work.
It wasn’t fulfilling, either, but it was a decent enough job. Despite the low pay in credits, work was steady, and I could pull overtime whenever I wanted.
Since my social life consisted mostly of drinking stale red wine on the weekends with my elderly neighbors, Hannah and Evelyn, and daydreaming about fanciful things I could never afford, I worked a lot of second-shift overtime—early morning hours—but I was still out by sundown.
I blame the books. Tales of old Earth, where fruit grew on actual trees outdoors, not in manufactured greenhouses stacked twenty stories high, of sandy beaches where the water was cool and safe to touch. They ignited dreams of a better life.
My boss, Allen, asked me out again a couple of months ago, and that’s when I decided dreams weren’t enough.
I stared at him and watched my potential future unfold—saying yes, dating a low-level manager at a government-run, overcrowded mail facility who had no ambition ever to leave Five Points, maybe getting married, waking up every day, six days a week, walking to work together until our knees were too weak and crooked to move, drinking homemade wine and eating reconstituted meals from little white packages until we died—I knew I had to make a change. To reinvent myself, set new goals.
More third-shift overtime hours well past sundown meant that maybe someday I could afford to leave. If not Fallset, then Five Points, at least.
Even with a million people, the city’s streets were quiet, especially in the rain. I’ve grown accustomed to walking home alone. No one, not without a very good reason, nefarious or otherwise, willingly walks through Five Points between midnight and sunrise, but I have no choice.
A full month into working extra night shifts, making it home tired but unscathed, and I grew brave. Complacent. Lazy.
The market up ahead confirms my apartment is only three more blocks.
A narrow alley with a dead end looms adjacent, barely wide enough for a dumpster and stacks of empty molding cardboard.
I should know better to cross the street rather than walk past it, but I’m distracted, busy daydreaming and planning my future.
The rain is loud, visibility is shit, and I’m tired, but something pricks at my nerves, making me stiffen.
Snagged by the waist, strong arms yank me into the alley, and my body pitches against the cold, damp brick. My forehead smashes against the wall, and it happens so fast I’m still registering that I’m being attacked before two dusters have me on the ground, held tight between them.
Screaming, I flail and claw at the brick, my fingernail ripping off as I try to pull away. I barely register the pain, my mask flying off while I struggle against them.
“Get off me!” I manage to free one leg, uselessly kicking out. “Help!” I scream.
“Quit it, bitch,” one hisses through a missing front tooth, pushing me back to the ground, pain blooming on my shoulder as he shoves me down. “No one’s comin’. No one can hear you in this shit, anyway.”
The other man holds my knees open with his, pinning my wrists above me on the mud-caked cement. Rain pelts down, and I spit out the sour, thick water as it fills my mouth.
The dusters are dirty, dirtier than me, like they haven’t showered in months. Their cheeks are ashen, sunken in, eyes bugging out like they’ve been snorting way too many uppers.
I know I’m fucked. Although clearly more well-fed than these two tweakers, I’m outnumbered, and they’re aggressive, high, and fueled by drugs and desperation. It doesn’t mean I’ll let them rob and assault me without fighting back, but I know I won’t win.
Terrified, weak and frantic, tears form, while cold, clammy sweat mixes with the rain on my skin while I scream and struggle.
I’m furious. Resigned, too. Because this is just life in Five Points, and I fucking hate it.
“Where’s your card?” The toothless one demands, rifling through my pockets, pawing at me through my clothes. I know better than to carry my messenger bag at night; that was just asking to get robbed. I guess I could add walking alone while female to the list.
The one straddling me snarls, “Where’s your credits, you ugly fucking cunt!” His hand pulls back and slaps me across the face, splitting my lip open. It stings, and I hiss and cough against the blood and thick, sludgy rain trickling down my throat.
His knees dig into my thighs, and even through the sour rain and blood, his stench clings to my taste buds. I doubt he’s brushed his teeth in years, and a steady diet of drugs and reconstituted meals festered his rotting mouth.
I felt like I was high with them, their erratic energy feeding into me as I fought back, scratching and kicking.
I thought I was clever, traveling without my ID card, which links to all my credits, my meager life savings. But now I’m worried about what they’ll do when they realize I don’t have any credits on me.
They’ll find something else to take.
My heart beats frantically, thinking about what might come next. A rising tide of terror crawls up my spine, threatening to close around my esophagus.
After the man kneeling next to me finishes rifling through my empty pockets, he smiles and looks at me with anticipation, tongue lapping out from the gap of his missing tooth, and he licks his lips.
I consider what I’m willing to endure to get away by being patient when the heavy tension between us begins to recede.
Their wild eyes dim. They each grunt, then grimace in pain, and the toothless one falls backward and lands on his ass. The impatient one with the rotten mouth falls forward, and I scream as he collapses on top of me, slacking his grip.
It takes me a moment to process.
Confused but still running high on adrenaline, I grip both his shoulders and shove him off.
I should get up and run away. Far and fast.
But I’m stuck. Fascinated. Angry.
Their bodies convulse on the ground at my feet, releasing a chorus of desperate cries for relief.
I assume it’s a side effect of whatever drugs they’re on, but their simultaneous reactions are too violent to be from whatever they snuffed before hitting the streets tonight. No, this is something else.
Run, Kate, my brain screams. Run! But I can’t.
Instead of listening to the voice of reason, my eyes track the three men slowly walking into the alley.
Hoods obscure their faces, but I can tell they’re lures. Something about the way they hold themselves with dangerous confidence, not quite walking but gliding, with an effortless grace that would make most humans seem like clunking elephants.
And they aren’t just any lures, as evidenced by the screams at my feet.
I should feel terrified, alone with five men, two having already assaulted me, three notorious for death and ruthless violence.
My attackers clutch their ears like that might hold in their melting brains; they cry and beg for help, rolling on the ground by my feet. Blood seeps out of their eye sockets, dripping out of their mouths. The smell is pungent. Their visceral screams are hard to ignore, even through the loud rain.
Two of the lures pick up the screaming men, easily dragging them deeper into the alley. I’ve never heard anyone sound so scared, bellowing in so much pain in my life, and I’ve seen a lot.
The third lure’s hand burns through my cold, wet clothes, searing heat against my back as he roughly picks me up and shoves me from the alley.
Throughout Five Points, rumors run rampant of three hooded figures who feed on the pain of victims nobody seems to miss.
Some see them as vigilantes, others think they’re psychopaths, killing without remorse because they like the taste of human pain.
They defy the role of a typical lure, who holds themselves to the highest standards of propriety, maintaining the image of perfection and carefully constructed positions of power in society.
From the recesses of the shadows, the tall, dark figure with immense power towers over me.
His intensity alone pushes me back a few steps, but my brain, with no good sense, denies the retreat, and I step forward toward the shadow man.
Without thinking, my hand reaches for his hood, but he takes a step back.
A formidable yet agile frame hides beneath expensive layers of black clothes. Even in the darkness, I can make out the firm planes of his chest. Broad shoulders strain against a black jacket.
I catch a glimmer of green eyes, but he turns before I can see them completely or commit them to memory.
“Pay more attention,” he snaps before disappearing down the dark alley.
I was just attacked. I should be terrified, anxious, running fast and far away. Instead, I feel alive. My skin tingles and a strange, sudden urge sparks to life deep within my chest.
After a moment of hesitation, I sprint after him. A strange pull, an inexplicable need to get closer, to understand, thank them, to… I don’t know, rip off the hood and see what’s underneath, drives me forward.
But the alley is empty. No hint of my attackers or the masked lures who saved me.
A hint of coppery blood and the nasty smell of melted organs hangs in the air, but with the sour metal taste in my mouth and the impossibly blinding rain, it’s too dark to see or to distinguish one scent from another by the stench in the alley by the dumpster.
I walk the rest of the way home in a daze, my hand throbbing from where my fingernail ripped off, my body buzzing with the adrenaline crash. My forehead aches, already growing a lump, my lips bruised and bleeding from where they slapped me.
I should change my plans for the future again: walk more cautiously, stop working third-shift overtime, get out of work before dark, and give up on my dream of leaving Five Points.
The daze continues for weeks.
I end up catching a terrible cold from the rain, and my hand and head throb for days.
Evelyn drags me to the apothecary, and I spend credits I don’t have on medicine.
But the next time Allen asks if I’d like to skip work to have dinner with him, I don’t hesitate to say no before pushing my cart past his desk.
I should be grateful I’m in one piece, that I’m not more seriously injured, that the attackers didn’t steal anything.
That isn’t enough, though.
I’ve seen lures before, of course. Never in my neighborhood, but through windows of fancy restaurants in Midtown when I was dropping off deliveries, on the covers of my romance books, or in pictures in magazines, surrounded by guards or traveling in packs.
They always seemed to travel in packs; lures are never alone.
Untouchable and always far away.
Without permission, an obsession takes root, escalating as the days pass.
I’ve never been a lure chaser. Too preoccupied with my own problems, I’ve never had the bandwidth to care about lures, even though many humans are desperate for their attention.
Sure, they’re beautiful, possess magic and power, and subsequently, hold a ton of wealth.
And as a duster, that could be appealing.
But the probability of our lives ever intertwining is next to zero.
Still…
Our interaction was brief. So brief, yet seared into my mind forever.
I no longer see my boss, Allen, and a bleak future.
I see them.